The Shares Researcher

Intro Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Corporation (LIORC) doesn’t mine anything, yet it gets paid before almost anyone else at one of Canada’s largest iron ore producers. Its roots go back to a 1938 agreement with Newfoundland, under which a predecessor company won the rights to explore and mine in Labrador West. Those lands are subleased to the Iron Ore Company of Canada (IOC), which is operated and 59% owned by Rio Tinto, with Mitsubishi holding 26%. LIORC collects a 7% gross royalty on everything IOC sells, plus 10 cents per tonne, and owns the remaining 15% of IOC. Set up as an income fund in 1995 and converted into a corporation in 2010, it is widely held, debt-free and passes nearly all its cash on to shareholders. 2026 has been miserable. IOC is deep into a multi-year “operational reset” to catch up on deferred waste removal, and haul truck problems have made things worse. Iron ore has meanwhile dropped to a two-year low. The shares sit 37% below their 52-week high. Valuation ...

Intro Nordwest Handel is a B2B buying and services group serving independent specialist wholesalers across Germany and other European markets. Founded in 1919, Nordwest bundles the purchasing volumes of its affiliated dealers, handles central settlement and associated credit risk, operates warehouse and logistics services, and provides IT, data and financial services. Its main operating areas are Steel, Construction, Trades & Industry, Building Services and Services, which includes factoring activities. At the end of the first half of 2026, Nordwest had 1,331 affiliated trading partners. The shareholder structure is unusual for a listed German small cap. Dr. Helmut Rothenberger Holding owns 50.03% of the shares, giving it effective voting control, while the remaining 49.97% is classified as free float. Rothenberger held 29.95% when it launched a voluntary takeover offer at €18.25 per share in 2017, subsequently increased its stake to 33.41%, and crossed the 50% threshold in Septemb...

Intro Vetropack is a Swiss manufacturer of glass packaging – bottles and jars primarily for the food and beverage industries. Founded in 1911 and headquartered in Bülach, it operates glassworks across Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Italy, Moldova and Ukraine. The company remains firmly in family hands. The Cornaz family controls 72% of the voting rights, a structure that has kept the business long-term oriented – for better and, some would argue during the current downturn, for worse. What makes Vetropack interesting now is that almost everything that could go wrong for a glass maker has gone wrong at once, and the shares have been punished accordingly. Valuation The shares trade around CHF 18.74, giving a market capitalisation of roughly CHF 370 million. On trailing earnings the stock looks expensive – 2025 was barely profitable – but trailing earnings are exactly the trap here. Two things are depressing the reported numbers. First, a wave of one-off charg...

Intro Sika is a Swiss specialty chemicals company founded in 1910 – originally to sell a waterproofing admixture for mortar. That product, Sika-1, is still sold today. Over the past 115 years, the company has expanded into a global leader in construction chemicals and industrial adhesives, operating more than 400 factories across over 100 countries with roughly 34,000 employees. For decades, Sika was controlled by the founding Burkard family through a dual-class share structure. That changed after a dramatic – and very public – takeover battle. In late 2014, the Burkard heirs attempted to sell their 16% capital stake (carrying 53% of voting rights) to France's Saint-Gobain for CHF 2.75 billion. Sika's board and management fought the deal tooth and nail, arguing it undervalued the company and disadvantaged minority shareholders. What followed was the longest takeover battle in Swiss corporate history – 41 months of litigation, boardroom tension, and shareholder activism. The...

Intro B&M started life in 1978 as a single discount store. The business pottered along as a small regional operation until 2004, when brothers Simon and Bobby Arora acquired it. At the time, B&M had just 21 stores. Under the Aroras, it became one of the great British retail growth stories, listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2014 and briefly reaching the FTSE 100. Today the group operates around 780 B&M stores in the UK, over 130 in France, and roughly 340 Heron Foods convenience outlets. The Arora family has gradually reduced its stake, making B&M a widely held institutional stock. A domicile migration from Luxembourg to Jersey – completed in early 2026 – has simplified the corporate structure and, crucially, given the board greater flexibility to return capital via share buybacks. Valuation The share price has roughly halved over the past year, falling from above GBP3.5 to around GBP1.6. At that level, the market capitalisation sits near £1.6 billion. On...

Intro Universal Music Group (UMG) is the world's largest music company, home to labels like Interscope, Capitol, Motown, Def Jam, and EMI, and to artists ranging from Taylor Swift and Drake to The Beatles and Bob Marley. The business operates in three segments – Recorded Music, Music Publishing, and Merchandising – across more than 60 countries. Its publishing arm alone administers nearly 4.5 million titles. UMG was spun out of French conglomerate Vivendi and listed on Amsterdam's Euronext exchange in September 2021. Valuation At €15.66, UMG trades near its all-time low and roughly 47% below its May 2024 peak. The market cap sits at approximately €29 billion. On adjusted 2025 earnings per share of €1.03, the stock trades at a trailing P/E of around 15x – the lowest valuation the company has ever carried as a public entity. The dividend for 2025 totals €0.52 per share, translating into a yield of about 3.3%. Full-year 2025 revenue came in at €12.5 billion, up 8.7% in c...